


Predictable, Unpredictable

by nagi_schwarz



Series: The Oppenheimer Effect [72]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 21:20:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10396437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Multiverse, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay or Jack O'Neill/Daniel Jackson, A mountain of schoolwork."Rodney substitutes for Evan's class while he's at the funeral, and John saves him from the mountain of schoolwork he has to grade.





	

John looked up when a shadow fell across his desk. Rodney was leaning against the doorframe of his classroom, clutching an armload of binders. He looked exhausted.  
  
“How do you do this every day?” he asked. “Those children are - draining.”  
  
John smiled sympathetically and stood up, crossed the room. “Lots of practice.”  
  
“I thought my scientists were bad, but keeping these kids under control is a nightmare. And they keep expecting me to do things like Evan, only I’m not Evan.”  
  
“Children - and teenagers - need structure and boundaries to thrive,” John said. “They feel safe when the world is predictable, has clear expectations and rules.”  
  
“The world isn’t predictable.”  
  
“On a cosmic level, no. But it’s not unreasonable for children to find their classroom setting predictable on a day-to-day basis.” John pressed a kiss to Rodney’s cheek. “What’s with all the binders?”  
  
“The only thing I can do to keep them quiet is assign them worksheets. But I’m running out of worksheets. Evan left me some, but I don’t think they’re enough. And they keep the kids quiet, but then I have to grade them, and it’s impossible to grade them all here at school, so I have to grade them at home.” Rodney sighed and pouted and looked ridiculously adorable.  
  
John went to scoop up his bag of assignments to take home and grade. “Be glad summer school’s only half a day, huh? Let’s get home.”  
  
“Home. Where I have to grade a mountain of schoolwork.”  
  
“At least Evan was nice enough to make you an answer key,” John pointed out. He straightened the desks absently on his way to the door, turned off the light, closed the door, and locked it.  
  
He and Rodney headed for the parking lot together, waving at people as they went.  
  
“Oh please,” Rodney said. “I could answer these questions in my sleep.” He always let John drive, because he wasn’t all that fond of driving, and he knew John liked to be in control of whatever form of transport he was taking.  
  
It was a zoomie thing, Rodney said, because he was nice enough not to call John a control freak to his face.  
  
“I’ll say this for the kids, though. When it comes to physics, they’re better than my scientists in that they don’t pretend to know everything there is to know about the universe.”  
  
John flashed him another smile. “That’s the great thing about kids. They’re teachable. They don’t magically turn into lost causes just because they become teenagers.” He guided the car out of the parking lot and on the familiar route toward home.  
  
“Yeah, but the sad part is that half of what they learn in college is bunk. I mean - the basics Evan is teaching them are still all right. Any one of them could go on and learn the physics we know at the SGC without a hitch. But knowing that I’m setting them all up for ignorance is frustrating. Is it frustrating to you?” Rodney glanced at him.  
  
John shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t really talk with anyone at the Mountain much about math. I mean, no one’s told me that math as we know it has fundamentally changed. Mostly I’m hoping these kids learn enough math to be able to manage their lives once they graduate and move on. Balance a checkbook. Maybe do their taxes. Figure out how much paint they need to paint a room.”  
  
“Well, Evan’s students will be very good at worksheets when he gets back.” Rodney sighed and tipped his head back, closed his eyes.  
  
John wanted to nibble on his throat, but he knew Rodney. Rodney was the kind of guy who fell asleep almost immediately after sex. If John indulged in his own whims, Rodney’s grading would never get done.

They made it back to the house in good time. John helped Rodney carry his grading into the den so he could take piano breaks when the students’ awful handwriting irritated him beyond tolerance, and then he headed into the kitchen to cook dinner.  
  
John didn’t know if he should be offended or touched that Evan had left them a week’s worth of frozen casseroles that were easy to reheat and big enough that they could have leftovers for lunch the next day. Rodney was actually a pretty good cook in his own right, because he had to manage his citrus allergy so carefully. Rodney just didn’t usually care to cook.

Oppie deigned to emerge from the laundry room to pace the kitchen floor while John preheated the oven and set the kitchen table. He set the frozen casserole on the counter, and then he leaned against the counter and petted Oppie, watching the bauble on his collar blink while he waited for the oven to reach temperature.  
  
When it was just him and Rodney, they tended not to eat at the table, instead ate in the den while they watched TV or did the last of their work for the day so that they could focus on each other for the rest of the evening, but Rodney had been grumbling about his mountain of schoolwork since he’d stepped into the den, and he’d need to take a break if he wanted to get through the grading with his sanity intact.   
  
John had just put the casserole into the oven and set the timer (Evan actually put little post-it notes on the glass casserole dishes so John knew what temperature and how long to cook the food for) when Rodney poked his head into the kitchen.  
  
“Remind me why I’m doing this again?”  
  
“For Evan, Cam, and JD, who are very upset about their beloved CO passing away,” John said.  
  
“He wasn’t _my_ beloved CO,” Rodney pointed out. “In fact, he let Sam banish me to Siberia for a couple of years.”  
  
“Yes, but Evan, Cam, and JD are family,” John reminded him gently.  
  
Rodney sighed ruefully. “That they are. What’s for dinner?”  
  
“Lasagne. Evan made it and froze it for us.”  
  
“Does he think we’re incapable of cooking?”  
  
“I think he was stress-cooking, mostly. JD took Hammond’s death pretty hard.” John resumed petting Oppie. “Grading that bad, huh?”  
  
“You know that whole saying about making mountains out of molehills?” Rodney slumped down into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “I think the worksheets are just making more mountains out of the already-existing mountains. It’s like I grade one worksheet and five more spring up in its place.”  
  
Oppie squirmed out from under John’s hand and leaped onto the table, nestled under Rodney’s arms and down onto his lap, purring. Rodney petted him and fretted.  
  
“You’ve got this,” John said. “There’s no rule that says all of today’s worksheets have to be graded tomorrow.” He knelt down beside Rodney and reached out, pulled Rodney into a kiss. “Come on. Let’s eat dinner, watch an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and then maybe grade for another hour. After that, bed.”  
  
“Bed?” Rodney echoed. “But it’ll only be, what, six PM? We’re eating dinner awfully early.”  
  
John smiled against Rodney’s skin. “Who says we’ll be sleeping?”  
  
It took Rodney a moment to process that. He was more tired than John had realized. “Oh. Oh! Right. Well - an hour of grading. I can certainly do that.” And he tugged John in for another kiss.  
  
Given the right impetus, Rodney could accomplish anything he wanted, and so they ate food, watched TV, sat together and graded, and then they retreated to the bedroom for some recreation. Afterward, Rodney curled up and fell asleep, and John tucked in beside him, listening to him breathe. Rodney didn’t know it, but the kids loved his classes. They thought he was brilliant, and they enjoyed when he went on his crazy rants and tangents, partially because they didn’t have to work when he got distracted, and partially because he was able to make physics sound so cool.  
  
Evan made it sound - reasonable. Logical. Occasionally kind of mystical and spiritual. But Rodney made physics sounds like a superpower.  
  
John gazed at Rodney’s profile in the shadows and knew that if they ever had a child of their own, Rodney would be a fantastic father. Yes, Tyler was their son in a sense, but he belonged to the other three in a way John had no words for. Tyler checked in via text once a day, just like Evan did. They were all family.  
  
John couldn’t help but look at Rodney and imagine a child for him, with the same blue eyes and expressive mouth and graceful hands, with the same love of music and science and probably also cake. John remembered the look on Rodney’s face, when Fiona had come to take baby Sophia away. One day, he promised Rodney. One day, a child for us, all our own.

He drifted into sleep, dreaming of a world where they had their own children, raised from birth and immersed in the world of Stargates.  
  
He came awake sharply when Oppie let out a fantastic yowl and came tearing into the bedroom.  
  
Rodney flailed upright. “What? Where is it? Where’s the fire?”  
  
“What fire?” John asked groggily.  
  
“Isn’t that the fire alarm?”  
  
Oppie yowled again and slashed his claws across John’s arm. John swore and yanked his arm to his chest, cradled it close.  
  
Oppie’s fur was all standing up on end, and he looked like a giant furball. A spitting, hissing, furious furball.  
  
“Oppie, what the hell?” John demanded.  
  
And then he noticed the way Oppie’s collar was blinking.  
  
Rodney rubbed his eyes, confused. “Hey, is that your cellphone ringing?”  
  
John tilted his head. “I don’t hear anything.”  
  
Oppie yowled again and darted out of the room. John took off after him, determined to hose him down good with the spray bottle from the laundry room, uncaring of his own nudity, and then he heard it. His cellphone ringing.  
  
He’d left it in the den where he and Rodney had been grading. Oppie was standing over it, yowling.  
  
John scooped it up. He didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”  
  
“Shep?” It was Tyler.  
  
“Tyler, what’s up? It’s the middle of the night. Why aren’t you calling me from your cellphone?”  
  
Tyler was sobbing. “Shep, we need you. Right now.”  
  
John was still only half awake, and his arm was throbbing from where Oppie had clawed him. “Where are you? What’s going on?”  
  
“It’s Cammie. They - they tried to kill Cammie. He’s gonna die, and the cops took JD. Please - you have to come right away.”  
  
Cam. JD. Evan.  
  
Tyler.  
  
“Tell me the address. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”


End file.
